CHAPTER XXII

SOLVING THE MYSTERY

The Kid sat up all night with the sufferers at short intervals administering to each a small portion of potato juice. Ike had recovered consciousness before they reached the cabin. He was but little injured. One foot had been burned a little, that was all. It had been the long strain and the sudden startling appearance of the bear that had caused the plucky lad to faint. A couple of cups of hot coffee put him into fair shape, but his astonishment at finding himself safe and in the warm cabin was great and his surprise at seeing the Kid greater. "Have I been dreaming and just woke up, Mr. Kid?" he demanded.

The Kid told him of what had happened, softening the horrible details as much as possible.

"It was Teddy Bear," Ike declared. "I got one look a him before everything goes black."

"Maybe, the Kid admitted. "I thought there was something familiar about him, but it was too dark to tell much."

"Those fellows tell me this place where the mountain is, is Rainbow Bend."

"It is, I bet," exclaimed the Kid. "I've been wondering for a month what it was the name suggested to me. I was sure there was no place along the river named that, but still, it suggested something familiar to me, and now it's all come back to me. I've passed it a couple of times when the sun hit it just right and made the mountain appear like a great big rainbow. It's a wonder I didn't guess the place when you asked me before. A bend in the river with a rainbow mountain on the point of the bend. Why, no other name could just describe it so well as Rainbow Bend."

"Then that settles it," said the little Jew, with tears in his eyes. "Them fellows, I guess, wasn't lying all the time. They said it was Rainbow Bend and that uncle used to live there in a little log cabin against the side of the mountain. They told me uncle was dead now and they took me to the cabin to see his bones, but they were not there. They looked so frightened when they found them gone that I felt sure uncle had died there and someone had found his body and carried it away or buried it. Maybe it was the boys and they keep quiet so as not to let me worry too much. I think maybe that be it. I feel so bad over uncle, you understand, that I do not care much what them fellows do to me."

"Lay down boy, and get a bit of sleep if you can," interrupted the Kid, kindly. "Save your yarn till the boys are able to hear it. It will save a second telling of it. Just try to go to sleep now. You'll have to take my place tomorrow."

"Do you think the boys will get well?" Ike asked, anxiously.

"Sure," replied the Kid, cheerfully. "They will be up and around in a few days, but it's going to take some time for all marks of the disease to disappear."

Ike rolled over in his bunk and with a sigh of relief closed his eyes and was soon sound asleep, forgetting his troubles and sorrows and the short, anxious days and long, weary nights he had spent waiting on his stricken companions.

The Kid stood for a moment looking tenderly down on the pinched, tired, little face. "You poor, tuckered-out, little devil," he muttered. "Hanged if I don't believe you are the pluckiest one of the bunch, and that's saying a whole lot."

At the first hint of dawn, the Kid awoke Abe and set him to cooking breakfast. Ike he let sleep on until the meal was ready. As soon as it was finished, he gave instructions about administering the potato juice, and hitching up the boys' team, as his own was sadly in need of rest, he skirted the mountain's base and rounded into the cove beyond. His errand was much the same as that undertaken by Clay and Case upon another occasion. Common humanity demanded that the two men, bad though they were, should not lie exposed to the wolves. He soon reached the scene of the previous night's encounter, where the three bodies lay as he had left them. He buried the two men in much the same way as Clay and Case had buried the murdered miner. This done, he turned his attention to the bear. It was Teddy alright, but not such a Teddy as had run away from his masters. This Teddy was thin and gaunt and it was evident from the ferociousness of his face that he had completely lapsed back again into the savagery of his brutal ancestors.

"Hum," mused the Kid as he looked down at the savage face. "Just mad, hungry, and desperate enough to want to kill anything you met up against, wasn't you, Teddy? You were just running amuck ready to kill anything and these two chaps happened to be the first you stumbled upon. Well, I reckon those boys on the _Rambler_ will want to think of you as a hero rushing to the rescue at the last moment, and I reckon that it would be sorter mean to rob them of their faith and pride in you. But that look on your face would give you dead away, so I guess I'll cover you up a bit. Anyway, you're better deserving of a grave than that fellow Bill was, so here goes."

Teddy Bear at last buried like a Christian, the Kid explored the clump of cottonwood, and as he had expected, came upon a snug log cabin with a big stone fire place. In one corner of it he came upon the stores stolen from the _Rambler_. These he loaded on the sled and turned his dogs back for the boat.

He was delighted with the improved appearance of his patients, who already were beginning to show signs of a speedy recovery. As soon as he ate the hearty dinner Ike had kept warm for him, he spread out his roll of blankets near the stove and stretched out. "Call me at dark if I don't wake up before," he directed Ike. "I am pretty well tuckered out. I've been thirty-six hours on my feet and my legs are beginning to get toothache."

Dark came, but the Kid was sleeping so soundly that Ike would not awaken him until he had prepared the evening meal, fed the dogs, and brought in the night's supply of wood for the Yukon stove. Even then it was difficult to awaken him from his slumbers.

"Gee," he exclaimed, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I thought I had only just got asleep, and here it is after dark. How are the sick boys coming on?"

"Fine," said Ike, happily. "Clay and Alex are not crazy in the head any more, and they try to talk some. Case, he's much better too."

"Good," said the Kid. "Now I'll take a wash in the snow outside and by the time I've tucked away some of that good supper I smell, I'll be fit as a fiddle."

As soon as supper was over and things cleaned up, the Kid ordered Ike and Abe to bed and took upon himself again the duties of nurse for the night. They were the same as the night before, excepting that the boys often awoke and tried to ply him with questions as to what had happened. But on such occasions the Kid forced upon them bowls of hot milk and firm commands to keep still, and they soon dropped off again into sound slumber unbroken by tossing or mutterings.

When Ike awoke, he found the boys all sleeping soundly and the Kid nodding in a chair beside the fire. "They'll be in pretty fair shape when they wake up," the Kid declared. "Of course they'll be too weak to get out of their beds for a couple of days, but you can let them talk all they want to. Let them sleep as long as they will, though. I am going to catch a cat nap now, but you can call me for breakfast, for I'm hungry as a wolf."

It was not until the Kid had been aroused and breakfast had been eaten, that Alex awoke and his clattering tongue soon aroused the other two.

It was a joyful morning in the _Rambler's_ cozy cabin and many were the exclamations of wonder over Ike's story of the things that happened during their long illness. "Did any of you boys take my uncle out of the cabin and bury him?" he demanded as he ended his tale.

Clay and Case glanced at each other. "We did," Clay confessed. "We hated to tell you then for we thought it was no use making things harder for you during the long, gloomy winter ahead."

"Thank you, boys," said the little Jew simply, his eyes filling slowly with tears. "Well, uncle is dead and I am free to tell about that letter now. It ain't much to tell but what I told you already, Clay, and I guess you told the other boys. My uncle tells me in it that he has found a great treasure, enough to make us rich like princes and able to do a great deal for the poor. He wants me, he says in the letter, to come and bring all the cash I got, and tells me to be sure and not tell anyone about it till we gets together, you understand. He says I'll find him at Rainbow Bend. The rest of the letter was torn off by that Jud or Bill, but I think maybe it tells how to find this Rainbow Bend, I don't know. Well, boys, uncle is dead, and that wicked Bill and his poor brother dead too, so I guess we never find out about the treasure."

The Kid, who had been an interested listener to Ike's story, fumbled in his pocket and produced a small match safe snugly done up in oiled silk.

"I found this when I was looking through Bill's pockets, hunting for the name of his folks or someone else to notify of his and Jud's death," he remarked. "I looked at it but couldn't make head or tail of it. It looks like a piece off a letter, but I reckon it's a kind of cipher from the queer marks scattered over it. Maybe it might be the piece tom off your letter, Ike?"

"Hold on a minute," said Clay, as Ike took the torn scrap of paper. "If those men opened and read your uncle's letter, they had no need to go clear to Chicago to try to make you tell them what was in it, and then follow you clear up here again on the same errand when they already knew all you knew of the letter's contents--more, in fact, for they had the piece they had torn off which you had never seen."

"Put like a lawyer's question," exclaimed the Kid, admiringly.

"Very cute question, Clay," agreed Ike, "but easy to answer. My uncle does not live in America long enough to learn to read and write English. He writes to me in Hebrew. Them fellows think the same as Mr. Kid, that the letter's a kind of cipher and that I've got the key to it. That's why they keep after me all the time and try to make so much trouble. This piece, Mr. Kid finds, just tells how to find Rainbow Bend. Well, boys, that's all I know, and now I think I go out for a little walk and get some fresh air."

"That clears up some of the mystery," said Clay, thoughtfully, "but there are two things unexplained yet. Who put that strange notice of our expecting to take this Yukon trip in the Chicago paper?"

"I think, perhaps," said Case, musingly, "that Bill did that himself. He had been listening to our talking about the trip, and he thought that notice would make a good excuse for Jud to call on us and try to arrange passage for the two of them."

"That's as good a guess as any," Clay agreed. "The other mystery is, what is the treasure, where is it, and how are we to find it? What do you think about it, Mr. Yukon Kid?"

"I think the old man just dreamed it," said the Kid, bluntly. "Likely the lonely life and the long darkness weakened him in his head and he got to imagining things. There's not enough gold around here to gild a baby's tooth. It isn't likely gold ground at the best. On top of that, about every man who has gone up the Yukon has prospected here. If the snow was off the ground you could see more prospect holes than you would care to count in these two coves. There's iron and coal in that mountain, no doubt, and, maybe, the old man got his idea of a treasure from them. But they are valueless until we get railroads into this country. The only treasure around here is these furs here in the _Rambler_. You've got reason to be satisfied with them."

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